


Ride (so get your gun and meet me by the door)

by littlerhymes



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-17
Updated: 2007-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how we like to do it in the murder scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride (so get your gun and meet me by the door)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to proteinscollide for beta-reading.
> 
> A while back MCR released a series of action figures; some came with intriguing little Prayer Cards, drawn by Gerard. This story is loosely based on those cards.

MIKEY (now)

This one night, out riding the outskirts of the Bryar side of town, Mikey takes a fall. His back wheel clips a chunk of concrete and he skids off the road in a hail of dust and gravel. Total wipeout.

He lets himself lie there for a moment before dragging himself to his feet. He checks himself: just cuts and bruises, nothing too bad, nothing that can't wait.

But the motorbike he called Betty is a wreck, the frame twisted beyond repair. He picks out the least damaged pieces, shoving batteries and leads into his pockets at random and scooping the rest into his helmet, stripping everything that might identify the bike as his. What's left will soon be picked apart, and by tomorrow only smudges of grease on the tarmac will show she was ever there.

It's a long way back to base by foot and the further he gets into the city, the more the night's alive with voices and hidden movements, here a gaunt face illuminated by the flare of a cigarette lighter, there a gleam of metal in the shadows that could be coins or something sharper. Casually Mikey takes off his leather jacket, drapes it over his arm so the red doesn't show. This is no place for Toro's crew - he's in Bryar streets now and a long way from home.

He hears them before he sees them, the growl and grind of five bikes or more. Mikey takes a step, back pressed to the wall, and not a moment too soon. They motor past in a cloud of smoke, Bryar's boys all in arrogant black. He keeps his head down and relaxes, just a fraction, as the noise of their engines starts to die away.

Then he hears a squeal of tires as the last rider suddenly wheels and turns, the bike muscling up so close it almost runs over his steel-capped toes. "You don't belong here," the rider says, voice muffled by the visor. "You're one of Toro's people, aren't you?"

The silence presses in around them. If there was anyone else around they're long gone by now, and if they're smart they'll swear they never here at all. "Yeah," Mikey says roughly, fingering the knife blade in his pocket. "What of it?"

The rider lifts up his visor.

"Frank Iero. Frankie," Mikey blurts out immediately. He grabs at Frankie's arm, just to make sure he's real. "Shit, I - we thought you were dead or something."

"Not yet." Frankie smiles, and for a moment looks like a kid again, tattoos and piercings and all.

Hours later, long past dawn, Mikey limps back in to base still grazed all bloody and jeans messily ripped. No grand entrance. Just a few nods, a few looks. If he'd never come back at all they would have accepted that too.

He heads downstairs to the rec room, slumps down beside Gerard on a battered foam couch and silently accepts a beer. "Rough fucking night, huh?" Gerard says, eyeing the scratches on his arms and the helmet he's still toting around with wires and engine parts spilling out of it.

Mikey takes a swig, the liquid only a little warm from sitting in Gerard's hand. "Yeah," he says simply, and hands it back. "Crashed out in the other side of town. Betty's gone, done for. You wanna go to Stump's with me tomorrow?"

Gerard hmms and shrugs, eyes closed.

He waits till Gerard has the bottle to his mouth to say, "Oh yeah. And I saw Frank Iero," and watches Gerard choke.

*  
   
FRANK (then)

Used to be a time when Gerard and Mikey would call out to Frank Iero from the narrow apartment building across from their own. Sometimes he wouldn't hear them and Gerard would have to scale the fire stairs up to the second storey, crawling through the window plastered with posters of long-dead punk bands to shake Frankie awake or pull off his headphones.

Now and then Frankie would just fake it. Lying in bed, the music turned up loud, but not loud enough that he couldn't hear the scrape of the window opening. He would stay still just a bit longer and wait for Gerard to come inside and across the room, the springs on his mattress creaking beneath the extra weight, waiting for him to lean down and say, "c'mon Frankie, wake the fuck up," real soft in his ear like a secret.

In the empty lots down by the railway they and the other Toro kids traded cigarettes and shoplifted comic books, and played half-hearted games of basketball. One summer both he and Mikey got skateboards and they spent the next two months taking turns at skinning their knees and watching for girls out of the corners of their eyes.

Gerard rarely bothered with the skating. Mostly he just watched and made really helpful comments when they screwed up. Like " _Nice_ one, Frankie," after a particularly shitty attempt at grinding the edge of a bench, and backed it up by clapping real real slow like some fucking sarcasm master.

And for anyone else maybe Frank would've had some real cutting reply, or at least a _fuck you_ , but right at that moment it was kinda hard to decide what stung more, the gravel in his shins or his ears burning. So he was pretty grateful when Mikey pegged an empty cola can at Gerard's head and he didn't have to say anything at all.

Anyway. All this was just killing time, they all understood that.

Maybe other kids did their homework or joined the army or dreamt about being astronauts, but not Frankie. Everyone in town knew who their dads worked for. _Everyone_ , no exaggeration. Frankie's teachers never told him off for forgetting his science fair assignments, that was for fucking sure.

Frankie was then already impatient to get started, get caught up, like Ray who dropped out of school at seventeen to start running with the biker crew, and like Gerard who followed a couple of years later. But a three or four year age gap makes a big fucking difference when you're only fourteen. Even one year seems like waiting for the end of the _world_.

While Frankie and Mikey and the kids from the family were still hanging around the railways and skateparks, Gerard already had a bike, a rep, a girl, at night went to bars and strip clubs, sometimes would just ride away for a day or two, and when he came back never tell a word where he'd been, not even to his mother.

So for a long time Frank thought it was anticipation, envy, that ate away at his insides and kept him staying up late by the window watching for Gerard's bike to pull up at the apartment block across the street, and his eyes peeled sharp for a glimpse of Gerard's face, smudged eyes, the smile that pulled to one side.

It wasn't until Frankie saw Gerard making out with a guy outside a bar he was not supposed to know existed that he could finally put a name to it. _Oh,_ he thought. Like a sucker punch to the gut or falling down the stairs. Or lying in the dark of night with your eyes closed, waiting for a boy you've known half your life to just... say your name.

Not three months later, Frankie's dad did a deal with the Feds over a racketeering charge and Frankie left town with his mom in the dead of night. He heard later the Feds did a warehouse raid and two Toros got shot down like dogs, and figured they left not a moment too soon.

Four years passed before he came back, wearing Bryar colours.  
   
   
*  
   
GERARD (now)

The Toros keep a fleet of ready cars at base. A few are off limits, the Bentleys and Jags and the other flash rides reserved for the family's old men and favoured sons, but the rest are fair game.

Gerard and Mikey pick out a beat-up black convertible with cracked leather seats - it might've been sweet back in their daddy's day - and head for Stump's. Gerard takes the corners too fast, so both of them jostle around in their seats like kids on a funfair ride. The wind blows back in their faces and as they get out of town the dust rises up, so they arrive with mouths are full of grit and their hair pulled all whichways.

"Should've taken a sedan," Gerard says, spitting on the roadside. Mikey says nothing, though pointedly pulls a comb out of his jeans pocket to smooth back his quiff.

Stump's is a gas station and diner five miles out from town, an old mom an' pop joint where truckers stop for smokes and greasy fries.

But out back is where the real money is made. The long garage is spartan, all bare concrete and bikes, bikes, bikes. Some are put together right here from the frame upwards, the parts ordered in from all over the country or made on the spot. Others come in rusted pieces of junk and emerge gleaming, chrome, lethal.

Patrick is hunched over a workstation when the Ways trudge in, their boots pale with desert sand and squinting against the light even through their twinned dark glasses. He takes the time to carefully square away the cluster of electrodes and wires he's working on before nodding them a greeting.

"Patrick." Mikey sticks out a hand, not flinching when Patrick shakes it with his greasy mitt. "What's new?"

Bikes are nice but after a few minutes listening to Patrick drone on to Mikey about transmissions and cylinders Gerard heads down to the diner, thinking he'll get a milkshake. He orders at the counter before going to sit in one of the booths, the red vinyl of the seat squeaking beneath him. The windows are covered with faded-yellow curtains that do nothing to block out the sunlight. Gerard puts his shades back on with a grimace.

"Big night, Gee?" Frank Iero slides into the seat opposite. Like it hasn't been four years. Like he isn't the enemy now, a Bryar scorpion crawling up the side of his neck.

"Yeah." Gerard blinks. "Guess it's obvious, huh," is all he says, 'cause if little Frank Iero's going to act this isn't a big deal, fucked if he will either.

The waitress comes over with the chocolate milkshake for Gerard, a soda for Frank. Gerard wraps his hands around the cool tall glass and sips. He sneaks glances across the table but the shock of recognition barely fades. He can't get over it, _little Frankie all growed up_.

He can see a Bryar bravo who wouldn't hesitate to stick a knife in the back of anyone in Toro red. But he can also see the kid he used to know, Mikey's friend who was always hanging around at their apartment, already ready with a smart-ass comment; or a younger guy with a pretty mouth nervously twisting a straw between inked fingers; or a stranger.

Basically? Nothing like what he expected at all.

Gerard sneaks another look and sees Frankie grinning slightly. "What?" Gerard says. "I got chocolate on my face or something?" He swipes instinctively at his chin.

"Nothing." Frank drains the last of his cola in a gulp. He lays his hands down flat on the table, careful like he's squaring a switchblade. "Just glad to see you, I guess."

"You know I was gonna be here, Frankie?" Gerard says suddenly. He pretends he's putting two and two together, as though he and Mikey didn't spend all yesterday talking about how they were gonna play this. "You made Mikey set this up, didn't you?"

"Yeah. So what if I did?" Tough enough in words but he pinks up at the ears and his right hand lying on the table curls up quick. "You gonna tell me we're on different sides now or some bullshit like that?"

But the fact is... Bryars and Toros are enemies through and through, have been since the beginning of forever, since long before either of their daddies were born. They've never known peace, just the long lead up to an ambush, the quiet before the fight.

He already knows what he has to do.

"Nah," Gerard says slowly. "We're old friends, right?" He stretches his cracked lips in a smile, feeling a million years old and certain the lie must be written all over his face.

"Yeah." Frankie smiles back, for real this time, and Gerard already feels like a piece of shit, like some fucking dead meat on the side of the highway stinking to goddamn heaven.

*  
   
MIKEY (then)

It was Frankie that suggested it. Mikey remembers this pretty damn clearly. _He_ thought it was a stupid idea and said so, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Don't be such a fucking pussy," Frank scoffed. "Hurry up," he said, as the front door slammed shut. "Listen, he's already gone!"

They trailed Gerard through traffic-choked streets, two kids on skateboards darting between stationary cars. Then the fading sunlight gave way to night and flickering streetlights, and they followed Gerard further and further out of home territory and into the borders of town, the kind of place where Bryar and Toro were just names, sounds, not powerful at all.

"This is a bad idea." Mikey wiped his sleeve across his nose. He looked ahead to Gerard's slumped shoulders and was suddenly and frantically ready to give up on this stupid game. "Let's go home. I don't care any more," he said, trying to sound indifferent instead of scared.

"Shut up, Way. Look, he's stopping."

Hastily they ducked into an alley.

Down the street a neon martini glass glowered above a bolted door, which opened up a crack on Gerard's rat-a-tat knock. After a few muttered words the door closed again, Gerard still on the outside. He leant back against the brick wall papered over with faded ads and quietly smoked a cigarette, as unhurried as they were impatient.

They didn't have to wait too long. The cigarette had just gone to ashes when the door opened again and someone else came out. Gerard straightened up and they could hear his voice, though not the words. He sounded glad.

Craning to see while not being seen, Mikey watched the two figures, their shadows overlapping, two dark bodies pressed up against one another and their mouths tilting, meeting. He heard Frankie suck in a big, disbelieving breath. "That's Ray Toro," Frankie said in a strangled whisper. "That's Gee and Ray and they're-"

Mikey yanked Frankie back into the alley and pushed him up against the wall, one hand clamped tight over Frankie's mouth. He felt cold all over, completely numb.

"You can never tell," he said, "you got it? You can never tell _anyone_. 'cause if you do I'll kill you Frank Iero, I swear to god." And he realised as he said it that he meant it. If he'd had a knife he would have pulled it out, held it tilted to the curve of Frankie's throat, and _pushed_.

Looking back, it was the first time Mikey saw his brother as someone that might need protecting - someone he _would_ protect, no matter what or who or where - and he had a first taste, then, of just how far it could go.

Frankie wrenched himself away. "Alright," he said sullenly, straightening his sleeves. Until then it was usually Frank who pushed, Mikey who stumbled. "Just quit being such a freak about it, okay?"

Mikey didn't reply. He already knew that he never really would.  
   
*  
   
FRANK (now)

"He's not the guy you remember. It's been a long time," Mikey said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. But the gesture was exactly right, so exactly the same as it was four years ago that Frankie had to stifle a smile in his beer. 

"Come on, Mikey. We're all different."

"You don't know the half of it." Mikey's smile was not exactly friendly. "This is a bad idea, Frankie, and I'm not just saying this because you're one of Bryar's now."

So, yeah. It wasn't easy convincing Mikey that he and Gerard should meet. He's still not sure why Mikey gives in at all. But after the first meeting at Stump's when Gerard says okay, he'll be at Hurley's next Friday night, Frank kinda stops wondering.

It can never be like old times, never, but there is a boy's own thrill to sneaking around to hole-in-the-wall bars in the neutral parts of town. Mikey's made it pretty clear he's not interested, so it's just him and Gerard shooting the shit and drinking beer and smoking until the bartender says last call.

He tells Gerard a bit about his wilderness years, getting dragged around by his mom from town to town, always the odd one out. He never quit school, just stopped showing up. What he did learn was the quickest route to the shady part of town. Any town. The people he found there never seemed surprised, seemed even to kinda recognise him from the way he walked and spoke. His father's kind of people, his mother would say with a bitter grimace.

He doesn't talk about how he ended up with the Bryars and Gerard doesn't ask.  
"But I always knew I wanted to come back here," he says, rolling a beer bottle between his palms. "Even if I could never be a Toro, I wanted to come back. I loved growing up here, you know? I just, I wish - " He breaks off, embarrassed, not having the words for describing those summers spent longing that life would begin. "So what about you?"

"Me?" Gerard points to himself like there's anyone else Frank could be referring to. He grins crookedly. "What you see," he says and gestures at the stained walls, the faded posters, before draining his glass with a gulp. 

Maybe it's the unexpected sourness in his voice that Mikey meant when he said Gerard had changed. It doesn't matter. Frank still wants what he wants. 

After Andy finally throws them out of his bar around dawn, he works up the guts to try it on. Both of them are drunk to the gills and that makes it easier. They are far out of the city limits, out in the middle of nowhere. Their bikes lie discarded a few feet away, at the end of a trail of crushed beer cans. They sprawl out, limbs all boneless, basking in the quiet.

Then "Ow," Frank says almost instantly, rolling over. "Fucking ow. Something is digging a hole in my _back_." He looks behind him. He's been lying on a tuft of desert grass. A tuft. of. grass. 

He has to tackle Gerard to make him stop laughing, just throw himself over the guy like a soldier jumping on a grenade, and even then the fucker's not sorry. "Say it," Frank says, "say it right now," and makes as though to throw a punch.

Gerard holds up his arm over his eyes, still shaking with silent laughs. "You're such - a fucking - tough guy," he chokes out between gasps. "Aarrrgh, you're crushing me." Gerard pushes him off and rolls them over, Frank's turn to be pinned down. He looks down at Frank with his wide joker's smile, lank hair falling over his eyes.

The distance between their bodies has never been so near, so far. Frank reaches up and pulls Gerard down towards him and their teeth clack against one another before they find a fit, and, yeah. It's not like he imagined it would be; it's something different, something real and good.  
   
   
*  
   
MIKEY (then)

He quit high school the summer before he turned seventeen. The days were already growing shorter and colder, and the guy waiting for him outside the apartment was all muffled up in a hoodie even though his jeans slipped low enough for a sliver of skin to show. 

"I'm Pete," he said, sticking out his hand. "You must be Michael Way."

"It's Mikey, actually." He accepted the shake warily. "I didn't think you would be so -" He stops.

"Short?" Pete said, grinning around a wad of bubblegum, red-streaked hair falling over his eyes. "Manic?" He _was_ kinda hyper, constantly shifting on the balls of his feet, but Mikey didn't mean that either.

They went to the skate park first. "I have some sick moves," Pete promised, and proceeded to stack it twice in a row, the second time so badly Mikey got kinda alarmed.

"Shit, are you okay?" Mikey said, giving the guy a hand up, privately thinking for a supposedly crack whatever-he-was he wasn't very - Well, but he _was_ very -

"Uh, I'm fine," Pete says, brushing himself down, looking sheepish. He flashes Mikey another quick smile, his dark eyes bright with laughter. "But that was pretty funny, right?"

So, yeah. Pete had a way of short circuiting his thought processes, pretty much right from the start.

Afterwards they went to a Toro bar. He'd known the bartender since he was thirteen and got served without a blink. He got a couple of beers and took them out back, where Pete hunched over the pool table squinting for the right angle. Mikey thought it might be a repeat of the skate park but the table was cleared within minutes.

"You want?" Pete offered him the cue. Mikey shook his head. "You ever shot a man before, Mikey Way?" he continued without skipping a beat. 

"No."

"You think you could?"

"Yeah," he said, "for family, I would." He didn't say _the_ family, but Pete didn't seem to notice.

"Good," Pete said, bobbing his head. "You will. But you won't do it today. You're coming to watch my back, you got it? Nothing else." He grinned again and slapped Mikey on the shoulder. "The family's been saying good things about you, so don't fuck it up, okay?"

Mikey pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Okay."

They left the bar by the back exit - "the bartender is our alibi, not that you'll ever need one in  _this_ town," Pete said - then walked two blocks south and one block west to a car park laid with cracked asphalt, weeds struggling up out of the dirt.

A few minutes passed, no more than ten or twelve, before the mark came out of the bar across the road. End of shift, judging from the couple of waitresses that followed. It was dark in the lot. The guy was still fumbling for his car keys when Pete shot him, one then two times to the chest, then twice more in the head.

It was quiet afterwards, no sirens, no screams. Just a few dogs barking and the distant hum of traffic.

Quickly Pete patted down the guy's pockets, taking the cash but not the credit cards, leaving the discarded wallet beside the body along with the gun. He gave the fold of notes to Mikey and then they left the same way they came.

Back at the bar Pete got another a couple of beers. He started to handed one over but didn't let go of the bottle neck. "You feeling alright, Mikey Way?" He shot Mikey a hard, bright stare that dared him to lie.

He thought about it. "Yes," Mikey said, and it was true. He felt fine. Untroubled. He tugged the bottle out of Pete's hand and took a gulp.

"Hmmm." Pete squinted at him sideways from beneath his fringe. "Yeah. I actually think you are. Okay, Mikey Way," and it sounded almost like approval.

"Next time," Mikey said, putting the bottle down on the edge of the pool table, "I want to pull the trigger."

It would be two kills later before Pete finally kissed him, touched him, took him to bed and fucked him, but that was three months away and all Pete did on that day was say "sure, Mikey Way," and brushed his hand over Mikey's like a promise.  
   
   
*   
   
GERARD (now)

Been a long time now since anyone thought Gerard was good for anything except a rumble, a knifefight, a booze-up. A guy you would trust with a bottle or a blade, but not your bike or a job that needed doing quietly or well.

Sometime in the past few years it all changed. Mikey started looking after _his_ back instead of the other way around.

That's what makes this so fucking hard.

Gerard puts away three beers, smokes a joint, before he can bring himself to say, "There's gotta be another way we can work this."

Mikey's crouched by his shiny new ride with a spanner and doesn't bother looking up. "What're you talking about?" It crosses Gerard's mind that Patrick would probably kill him if he knew he was already tinkering with Betty II only three days out of the shop.

"This thing with Frank Iero. You know what I mean." Gerard paces up and down the garage, gnawing on the nail of his thumb and wishing he had a cigarette.

They had met up again after that night. Ostensibly it was to drink and play pool and throw darts but he wasn't surprised when it ended in a bathroom stall with an over-too-quickly hand job.

 _Christ. I want to do this over_ , Frank said, _I want to_ \- and he'd let it trail off. Probably thinking it never could get any further than this, sneaking around, risking his rep for a few quick fucks. Not knowing, as Gerard did, that he was actually risking a whole lot more.

Gerard shakes his head, shakes those thoughts out of mind, tries to concentrate. "We can give him a warning, run him out of town, something. It doesn't have to be. You know."

An eye for an eye, a rat's death to the son of a rat.

They'd promised it oh so long ago to the memory of a dead friend, a first love, and he'd been so _certain_ until Frank actually showed up, and then suddenly it wasn't revenge or justice or any of those stupid fucking things - it was just a kid he used to know, grown up into a guy he wanted to know again.

"Shit. You're actually serious." Mikey puts the spanner down on the floor very carefully. He looks up, his glasses crooked on his nose and voice quite gentle. "It's too late, Gerard."

He goes cold all over. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's too late. I developed the photos, I made the calls, as of last night it's _done_. Bob Bryar is probably heading to Frank's place now with a gun."

And as easy as that they have killed a man, with a few well placed lies, a couple of blurred photographs. Even if he doesn't die he'll be branded an informer forever and both Toros and Bryars will spit at the sound of his name.

"Fuck." Gerard puts his hands to his head. He thinks he might be physically sick. He sits down on the floor, realises dazedly he's pulling out his own hair, that it hurts. 

They say Bob Bryar got knifed in the leg once and all he did was laugh and kick the guy's head in. Just kept _kicking_ until the guy's head collapsed, like a tomato stomped flat on black tarmac. And Gerard actually does gag then, spitting up a gob of bile.

"Gerard, Gerard, Gee." Mikey is shaking him hard, pressing something cold into his hand. "It's only just midday. Take the bike. Take the bike and just go, okay?" 

He doesn't need to be asked twice. He gets on and kicks the engine over, the roar of it almost drowning out Mikey's words.

"You know I only did it for you, Gee. You and Ray." His little brother shoves his hands into his pockets. "I thought it was what you wanted."

Gerard shrugs, tries not to grimace, fails. "I know. I thought so too."  
   
*  
   
FRANK (later)

He checks his watch and sees it's almost three. Break over. 

He flicks the stub of his cigarette away and walks back into the store. The limp's almost gone now, nothing the casual observer would notice unless he rolled up the leg of his jeans to show the scar. 

There's a girl called Jamia who works in the diner down in the street. She's the only person in town who's seen it. "Wow," she said enthusiastically. "That's really nasty."

"It was a motorcycle accident," he lies. "I was lucky," he adds, and doesn't.

He's thinking about asking her out for coffee sometime. Maybe next week.

There's hardly any customers this afternoon so he just takes one of the guitars out of the window display and starts picking out tunes. He learnt to play when he got out of hospital and it was driving him crazy sitting around with nothing to do. He's starting to get pretty good at it too.

It's been almost twelve months since it all went down. He remembers Gerard helping him tie a tourniquet around his leg, the blood making their hands all slippery. They struggled down the stairs together, the cripple and the madman, almost tripping over Bob Bryar's unconscious body in the doorway.

"Go, go, go," Gerard said when they got to the street, and pushed him onto the bike, "just go, okay? Try Stump's or something, just get out of town."

Then holding him back for one last kiss anyway.

Frank looked back just before he turned the corner and thought he saw Bob Bryar staggering out of the house, blood streaming down his forehead, and then was he too far away to see anything. After a few moments he heard gunshots, and then the sound of sirens.

He still doesn't know if Gerard made it out okay.

The strings of the guitar are rough against his fingers as he forces himself to start strumming again.

He kinda hopes one day the bell over the door will ring and he'll look up and it will be Gerard. He even thinks he knows what he'll say, once they are done with how are ya and what's been happening and all the rest of it. Nothing about forgiveness, though, no apologies made or taken.

 _You still drawing, Gee?_ he will ask. That he would rather be an artist than one of Toro's crew was the first secret thing Gerard ever told him.

 _Sure,_  Gerard will say slowly, like he isn't sure where this is going. _Well, kinda._

 _See, I was thinking about getting another tattoo,_ Frank will say, rolling up his sleeve to show the empty space between his elbow and wrist.  _Thought maybe you could help me out._

 _Huh. What do you want?_ Gerard will say, and his hand will reach over to close the gap, to trace that same space of skin with his own callused fingers. But he won't be looking at Frank's arm, he will be looking at Frank and Frank will be looking back.

Frank will say, smiling, because he's always wanted to use this stupid line,  _I kinda want to see you again, Gerard Way._

And Gerard's mouth will crook up in a smile back as he says,  _Oh yeah, okay. Okay._    
   
   


**Author's Note:**

>  _The Prayer Cards_
> 
> Mikey - St. Essex : Patron Saint of New Jersey  
> "This is how we like to do it in the murder scene..."
> 
> Frank - St. Viticus : Patron Saint of Sacrifice  
> "So give me all your poison, and give me all your pills, and give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill..."
> 
> >Gerard - St. Sorrows : Patron Saint of Switchblade Fights  
> "Oh how wrong we were to think that immortality meant never dying..."
> 
> Bob - St. Capone : Patron Saint of Gangland Murders  
> "In the middle of a gunfight, in the center of a restaurant, they say - come with your arms raised high..."
> 
> Ray - St. Orpheia : Patron Saint of Broken Strings  
> "Gaze into her killing jar I'd sometimes stare for hours..."
> 
> Some visuals available [here](http://s399.photobucket.com/albums/pp78/winter_rowan/prayercards/?albumview=grid).


End file.
